SHORT STORIES: ‘Poverty’

The young man slumped down on the bed and looked over at the clock: 9PM. If I go to sleep now I shall awake too early, he thought, yet he could not find anything to fill these empty hours. The thing that really frustrated him about poverty was the boredom. The endless hours of silence and sterility. So many of his passions were impossible without money, and so he was left to reading and walking, but after over two months of financial drought, with winter closing in, he found both of these unpleasant and unsatisfying.

He lay on top of the sheets, watching his breath condense in the cold air, and started recounting the day’s events in his head. He had awoken around eleven, made a weak cup of coffee, and sat and read the pamphlets and propaganda that had come through the post that morning. After several minutes, he found a pen and started defacing the leaflets, childishly drawing facial hair on the candidates who had attempted to sway him in the forthcoming election. This had become a daily routine, every morning leaflets would arrive for toy shops or life insurance companies, and he would hunch over his boiling cup of browned water and scrawl on children and the elderly.

At around midday he had left the house for a walk. The bitter cold had rushed all over him as soon as he opened the door, but he persevered, striding aimlessly into the street. He traipsed along the muddy banks of the canal for an hour, enjoying the sights of the long grass and the passing water, but still antagonised by the temperature, until he reached a supermarket. He had thirty-one pence to his name but went in regardless. He headed straight to the magazine section, and began leafing through the press, always keeping a careful eye out for store assistants who might object to this practice. Forty-five minutes went by, and he became tired of reading, his eyes withering under the flickering fluorescent glow of the lights, so he wandered up the central aisle. All of a sudden he caught a waft from the bakery, the warm sweet scent of yeast, and was forced to leave the supermarket.

He knew he could not eat until evening so as to continue his rationing. He had been foolish and, at the beginning of the month, he had spent nine pounds on a bottle of gin, which he had proceeded to drink across two days. He had enjoyed the gentle rising warmth the alcohol gave him, and the sense of light-headed carefreeness of these two days, but he then had to awake on the third day, sober, cold and alone.

He walked back via the estate, and about ten minutes from home, his wrist had started to cramp and then go numb again. He had seen a doctor about this, and he said that it was just a consequence of letting the arm get too cold, and could only be solved by the purchase of warmer clothing. When he arrived home he ran it under lukewarm water for ten minutes and gradually regained feeling.

Around 4PM he scanned his bookshelf, looking for distraction from his ever more self-destructive thoughts. He pulled several books off the shelf, only to replace them as he had read them too recently. He needed new books. He could not continue to repeat the same paragraphs any more. A friend had promised him a lend of several tomes of Dostoevsky, but he would not pick them up until Saturday. He found a slim book of Maupassant short stories that he had not yet exhausted, and began re-reading them, obsessively unpicking each sentence for allusion and subtext. This was usually the highlight of his day, and today was no exception.

As dusk arrived he stood up to switch on the light, and took a few moments to stare out of the window into the alley. Above the faded brown fence the distant trees were swaying gently in the wind, and the small snowflakes glimmered in the streetlight, before falling and melting on the damp ground. He stood there for around thirty minutes, watching the gentle movements, and thinking about the recent absence of a cat who often stopped by to rest atop the fence.

He dined on four slices of stale bread and three eggs, fried without any oil. This left terrible stains on the pan, but at least it would take up another ten minutes of his time scrubbing it away. The eggs were cooked with large amounts of chilli powder, as he found this would suppress any further hunger.

After dinner, he sat and sung to himself for a while, before receiving a telephone call. It was a friend inviting him to the pub. He politely declined, as he did not wish to accept any charity, or watch other people enjoy themselves. From time to time, he did go into pubs, just to sit by the fireside until he was moved along, but he did not fancy the walk this evening.

Slumped on the bed, he took reassurance in the fact that it was the twenty-sixth of the month, and that he would be payed soon. But the drudgery, the disinterest would continue. Laying on the bed, wriggling his toes to keep them warm, he thought to himself: This is enough to make anyone lose their mind.